Baggless in Railay!

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After leaving the wonderful island of Ko Tao, I was sorely disappointed to come to Railay (a peninsula jutting out from Krabi's coastline, in the Andaman Sea, though only accessible via long boat). Railay is known for its dramatic karst mountains that are perfect for intense rock-climbing, which is rightfully true-- sheer cliff faces plummet right down into the ocean and I'm sure give spectacular views when you're perched up there while the sun sets-- but I found it to be absurdly overcrowded, dirty, and expensive. Maybe I'm just sore because I stepped on someone's vertical corncob stick (local Thais sell roasted corn on the beach) and got a nasty hole in the bottom of my foot...

Anyway, the east side "beach" is really a murky mudflat, where most of the over-priced restaurants and "budget" bunglows are (think 800 baht for a dilapidated shack). We only came here to eat some cheap lunches-- joining the local construction workers (oh yes, and everything is covered in construction wastes-- hotels are springing up in every available space) underneath a palm-frond hut for some steamed rice and chicken or vegetables (40 baht). Otherwise, all of our time was spent on Tham Pra Nang (Princess Beach, in honor of the legendary sea princess who once lived in the nearby cave, now a place where fishermen have left numerous pallic offerings around her shrine), which did served as the nicest stretch of beautiful white sand, and was positioned for fantastic views of the sun dropping below the water at night.

During the day, Chris made a series of middle eastern sand castle (compounds), and I mostly read or wandered or people-watched. The most expensive resort in Thailand is set here, armed with guards, but even from the outside we could glimpse the lavish paradise facilities they offered-- and for a mere 3000 euros per night!

Unfortunately, every square inch of beach is covered in pale European bodies-- mostly older, richer, and fatter, and as customary they often went topless. In addition, it seemed like everyone had nothing better to do than eat and roll over to tan their hides-- I'm sure the local Thais are less than impressed, but happy to make a buck. However, around 6 pm everyone either gets hungry or goes back to the mainland, so the beach suddenly clears out and the romantic island beauty flourishes~

At night Chris and I wandered around the edge of beach away from the resort to find an empty stretch of sand where we set up our tent. Not only did we save oodles of money, but we were able to fall asleep under the stars (sometimes we like to lose touch with reality and pretend we really are at the ends of the earth...) with a whole beach to ourselves.

Day two was also peacefully relaxing-- we walked around the many pathways to hunt out interesting sights and to see the vibrant bars that are advertised all around the island. I went into Diamond Cave, where they supposedly have an amazing quartz wall, but was completely disappointed, as I have been with 95%!o(MISSING)f the caves we've explored.

And then the unthinkable happened. We returned to a spot back in the brush where we had stashed our bags during the day, only to find they had been stolen! I won't go into details here, but basically we had a horrific night and morning of trying to face the reality that our bags (clothing, toiletries, sketchbooks, everything was long gone) and how would we finish the trip without them? All we were wearing were our bathing suits, and luckily we kept our passports, money, and camera with us (in case this happened...).

Since the island has no police, we talked with a security booth who photocopied papers for us to post (next the all the bar fliers) about our missing bags. Then we walked to all the bars, restaurants, and hotels asking the person at the front desk to post our sign (we were also carrying a sign written in Thai, which ended up being the most useful tool). Everyone was extremely sympathetic and promised to find us right away if they heard or saw anything-- but we were extremely downtrodden nonetheless.

We stayed the night with Camilla, an Argentenian girl who traveled with us from Ko Tao, joining her and her boyfriend Nicol for a pitiful evening at Gecko bar- which played live music and would have been loads of fun had I not been about to burst into tears...

In the morning we woke up to continue our search-- this time walking up and down the stretch of beach asking the Thai food/ souveniers sellers if they had seen anything. Almost like a detective novel, one interview led to another and a few hours later our bags "mysteriously" appeared in a cave around the corner from where we had left them!
Hooray! We cheered with extreme happiness and all the anxiety poured out of us-- now we could go on with our trip!
Grabbing our recovered bags, we paraded down the beach and down the pathway to the eastside mudflats, waving and thanking the 30 or so persons we who trying to help us find them, and boarded a longtail back to Ao Nang, where we could catch a seangtow to Krabi, then a bus to Trang.

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